It's time to discipline Colin Campbell

Editor's note: This article originally appeared in the April
2010 issue of New England Hockey Journal.

You can have Colin Campbell's job, which, as we know all too
well in the Hub of Hockey, is informally known as director of
discipline in the NHL.

Formally, he's the senior VP of Hockey Operations, just in case
you're crafting a cover letter and attaching it to your resume
before firing it off to NHL HQs, 1185 Avenue of the Americas, New
York, N.Y.

Campbell not only has the worst job in hockey, but he also is
pretty bad at doing a bad job.

Two cases in point: his permissive, see-no-evil stance on the
menacing hits delivered to David Booth and Marc Savard this season.
In both instances, Campbell allowed the miscreants (Mike Richards
and Matt Cooke) to skate free, and the only good to come of it was
that it forced the league's 30 general managers finally to come to
grips with language in the rulebook pertaining to headshots.

Only days after Savard was lugged out on a stretcher, his season
likely finished after Cooke's blindside hit, the GMs cobbled
together a proposed rule change to take blindside and backside hits
to the head out of the game.

Hey, novel idea to protect the working help, isn't it? And to
think, it only took the league the better part of century to get
around to figuring out that brains can't be fair game.

Bad look, broken bodies and addled gray matter strapped to
stabilizing stretchers and lugged out of rinks. In a span of some
30 months, Bruins fans watched both Patrice Bergeron and Savard
each end their workday in similar style, frightening sights that
would give any parent pause about entering a son or daughter in
even so much as a rec league.

Campbell, a decent guy who, in many ways, only reflects the
owners' wishes, repeatedly said that he was handcuffed when it came
time to consider supplemental discipline for either Richards or
Cooke. The rulebook, he said, simply didn't contain language that
allowed him to sit players out for hits to the head, even if
targeted, if they were delivered via a shoulder check.

Count me confused, because replays of Cooke's hit on Savard
showed Cooke cocking his left arm and smoking the unsuspecting
Savard in a clear drive-by beatdown. Elbow? Well, he led with his
elbow, and it's hard to tell the exact point of contact, but
ultimately Campbell felt it was all vague enough to shrug his
shoulders and wait for the GMs' new rule to kick in -- be it later
this season or at the start of 2009-10.

Anyone remember Milan Lucic getting suspended a year ago, in
Round 1 of the playoffs, for whacking Montreal's Maxim Lapierre in
the kisser? Lucic, standing still, had a conversation going with
another Hab and smacked Lapierre for attempting to butt in on his
conversation. Campbell said then that he could not tell if it was
Lucic's stick or a glove that made contact with the wounded,
smack-talking Hab.

''What is clear,'' noted Campbell at the time, ''is that he
delivered a reckless and forceful blow to the head of his
opponent.''

And for that reckless and forceful behavior, Campbell sat out
Lucic for Game 3 of the first-round playoff series.

What is clear, from watching the hits on Booth and Savard, is
that they, too, were reckless and forceful blows -- just not
forceful enough to merit supplemental discipline. Still, Lapierre
did not miss a game, while Booth needed 45 games on the sidelines
to recover from his concussion and Savard -- also concussed --
didn't figure he would recover (maybe) until next season.

In the spring of 2008, Campbell found language in the rulebook
to deal with Sean Avery's, shall we say, creative stick work in and
around Martin Brodeur's goalie crease. Avery waved the stick
directly and repeatedly in Brodeur's face, tantamount to filling
St. Martin's cage with a pile of shaving foam.

The rulebook didn't contain the precise language necessary for
Campbell to deal with such, uh, creativity, but he found enough
latitude in the definition of ''unsportsmanlike conduct'' to change
the rulebook overnight. Use of the stick, Avery-style, became a
minor penalty.

We could go on here forever and a day, but the point is,
Campbell needed to step up and be creative with his rulebook
interpretation when Booth was victimized. When he compounded that
error in the Savard case, it highlighted the fact that Campbell has
been too long on the job.

It's time for the league to get a new director of discipline,
and also time to revamp the entire supplemental disciplinary
process. Decisions like these should be made by a three-man board,
including one league representative, another from the Players'
Association and a third party of their mutual choice.

Players are getting hurt, badly, on the ice. It’s time for
the league office to stop compounding the injuries.

Numbers game

For all the bellyaching around here about Tim Thomas and the
“off'' year he has had with the Bruins, his numbers in late
March were pretty much on par with Vancouver's Roberto Luongo (he
who wears the Olympic gold medal).

Thomas had a 2.57 goals-against average, a .914 save percentage
and four shutouts. Luongo stood at 2.45, .915 and four shutouts.

Lack of goal support had Thomas with a 15-17-8 record, compared
to Luongo's 36-19-2.

Baptisms by fire

Not sure what it means, but it's possible that seven of the 16
teams to qualify for the playoffs this season will start goalies
who don't have one minute of postseason experience.

In the east, it could be Tuukka Rask (Boston), Michael Leighton
(Philadelphia) and either Brian Elliott or Pascal Leclaire
(Ottawa).

Not long ago, clubs never entertained the thought of going with
a rookie 'tender. Now it could be upwards of nearly half the clubs
going with newbies -- at a time when goaltending remains, as
always, the most critical position on the ice.

Long in the tooth

The Leafs got a late nod from Tomas Kaberle to try to deal him
at the March 3 trading deadline but GM Brian Burke (Providence,
R.I.) couldn't work an effective swap for the Czech defenseman.

Kaberle's no-trade clause vanishes for six weeks this summer,
leading up to Aug. 15, and it's a good bet Burke will ship him out.
That said, Kaberle was impressive this season, in part because the
Leafs added some muscle around him.

Burke, going into 2009-10, said he was eager to see Kaberle
perform ''when he's not picking his teeth out of the glass all
night.'' With but a dozen games left in the season, Kaberle had six
goals and 47 points in 70 games.